I said that Tress hired Love. Tress wanted Strollo as his successor at AD and Sweet agreed ... as did anyone in the know at the time. Tressel knew that he (and Malmisar) did nothing but push football (and rightly so as it was the heart of our revenue stream) & there were so many things lurking "on the horizon" that needed to be taken care of ... and Strollo has done just that. Did football suffer? in many ways yes it did; but without all the new women's sports program we would not have a football team right now. Then to have a new MBB rebuild forced on him about 3-5 years too soon does not help.
I have no great love for Strollo, but to say he has a record of losing is not true. He is the AD, not the HC of every athletic team at YSU. Go ahead an say that you do not like the guy; but as with Monty, you have no performance reasons to do so. Both are exceptionally good at what they do. The AD has 3 duties in administering sports at any university:
1) Offer a quality product.
2) Offering a popular product
3) at a good price
Do any of you have any idea what is involved here? A winning team is not the only thing required to be a quality product. If YSU football was free, would the increase in attendance be worth it? NO. We would be non-scholarship and the quality would suffer greatly If we charge $48 per ticket for a football game would people go? I CERTAINLY WOULD NOT. Do you realize that every dollar that comes into the university (even through sports revenue) is scrutinized and claimed? A popular product is not simply event attendance. It is having monies put into this event that will mean a possible reduction of monies for non-athletic purposes. Most university admin think nothing of sports and see them as nothing short of a necessary evil. They vote against every dime that the AD asks for.
Don't you think it is funny that some people say that Bo "fell into Strollo's lap", while in other posts give all the credit to JT? Makes no sense to me. Bo fell into the university's lap. Bo's agent called Tressel looking for work & JT (saying nothing) referred him to Strollo. It was a stand-up and professional thing for JT to do and Strollo simply did his job from there. There is really nothing else to it. It is the same thing with every other sport; when a coach is needed, the best candidate for the dollars is hired. As fans, we may wish to spend what ever it takes to get the top coach in the US, but that is simply not possible.
Only Bo's circumstances made him take a sub-$300k position and most of us can only guess as to what those circumstances are. It may interest many of you to know that Tressel became AD with the addition of a small stipend of less than $20k added to his annual salary. At the time he did not even make $100k as head-coach at YSU ...while other universities (at our level) where paying 50% to 100% more. It may further interest many of you to know that Narduzzi was rejected and ridiculed when he asked for a stadium. No one on the athletic board or academic council felt that a football team at YSU could generate enough revenue to afford more than the rent Falcon Stadium.
The moral of this story is to stop thinking that Strollo & Tressel do not know certain things and and are not doing the best that they can. Instead, as fans, we need to realize that they have to do best that they can given the resources available to them.
